Finale

We had a great weekend. We are now exhausted and I am ready to get back to work, but we had fun. Friday I took my last final of my first year of med school. Ah sweet bliss. It was awful, and it was a class I loved (Microbio) unfortunately. I felt like half the questions were "A seventy year old man in Queens has a fever, myalgia, and nausea [ie, the world's most nonspecific symptoms!]. The infection he most likely has is most likely transmitted by ______" Which rules out about two out of 100 organisms we've learned about (transmitted a number of ways) that a 70 yr old man in Queens could reasonably have. Oh well. After the test, Naomi and I went to storytime yoga at Karma Kids near Union Square. They do this for free, I think as advertising for their classes, and it was AWESOME. 45 minutes of acting out stories as the teacher read them. I liked it too because the teacher was happy with kids blurting out answers, running up to point at the pictures, etc. It was, in other words....so very NOT upper east side. After that, we went to the Rubin Museum for a little kid art/banging on a giant drum, and amazingly a little art viewing on my part. We aimed reasonably low and stuck to one exhibit, which was really cool--a collection of black and white photographs of villagers in a remote part of the Himalayas. I was satisfied. We met Matt at Carl Schurtz, let Naomi splash around a while in the water, and headed home to watch the final two episodes of Grey's Anatomy (we never watched the rest of the season, but sometimes you are just in the mood for some pointless drama tv).

Saturday and today we went to playgrounds several other times to swim, run around on the equipment (it is hard for me now to remember that Naomi doesn't need help anymore!), dig in the sand. Naomi and Matt hung out at the bookstore. And we all went to the New York Hall of Science in Queens. It was amazing. A pain to get to, but really just extremely interesting and entertaining, both for Naomi AND for us. They had a preschool childrens museum-type area, lots of microbe and molecule features (Naomi really liked watching some worm under a microscope and smelling the fungus that causes the beautiful scent you smell after it rains...who knew?), a giant bubble wall, giant circular bubbles, a wall that freezes your shadow, physics of sports demos, an enormous outdoor science playground, etc. We stayed for three hours and left an enormous amount unseen. If only it were a little less of a pain to get to, we would definitely sign up for a family membership.



Saturday night Matt and I went to a dance performance at LaMaMa in the east village (I loved one dance, liked one, and didn't like the other), then had dessert at Max Brenner. This is definitely my new favorite place to eat. The chocolate is to die for--no better self-reward. So to any family members reading this outside of NY--be forewarned, we will try very hard the next time you visit to convert you away from Serendipity and toward the bald man's heavenly chocolate. One of the dances was part ballet, part modern, danced to a live soloist singing Faure with a simple piano accompaniment. So beautiful. We randomly ran into a friend from my med school class who used to dance for one of the companies. And just being in the village was great too. It continues to amaze me how many different worlds are contained in the small area of NYC. There is no single NYC. I love it.